Milk and Vine's Viral Success Is White Mediocrity Capitalizing on Rupi Kaur’s Work

Milk and Vine has gone viral and that’s a problem.

In this op-ed Aditi Natasha Kini argues that the success of a new parody of Rupi Kaur's “Milk and Honey” is symptomatic of white mediocrity.

Adam Gasiewski is proud of his self-proclaimed “legacy,” a 74-page play on South Asian–Canadian poet Rupi Kaur’s debut Milk and Honey, called Milk and Vine. The book — a collection of written versions of Vine memes, co-authored by Adam and Emily Beck —
instantly hit the best-seller list on Amazon, thus “redefining the meaning of poetry,” as Adam himself put it. His first tweet about the book has gone viral, garnering 64,000 retweets and 150,000 likes so far.

Adam and Emily, a young white couple in their teens, ripped memes from the now-defunct social video platform Vine and repackaged them in a way that parodies Rupi’s highly successful book, imitating the same simple design, delicate illustrations, and minimal punctuation. A BuzzFeed article cosigned the book, saying that Adam and Emily’s book “takes inspiration” from Milk and Honey but is something “way, way better.” But is it really better? To many, Milk and Vineis exemplary of white mediocrity, of how white people just don’t have to do as much as people of color to be recognized and rewarded. These teens, who felt entitled to collage content from a platform known for black humor in satirizing a South Asian woman, reaped benefits far greater than their merit. The result is a degradation of a South Asian woman’s work.

To Rupi’s critics, this ridicule is masked by “taste” — a debate on whether this is “really” poetry and if Rupi’s pop poetry has literary cred. Taste and quality are difficult barometers to calibrate, sure. But when they’re examined within the predominantly white and patriarchal publishing world, writing that even slightly engages with “identity politics” tends to be brushed to the side. It doesn’t help that Rupi does not shy away from immigrant optics — while her poetry may be vague, her visual persona is decidedly Indian, her Sikh heritage unmistakable.

While there isn’t consensus on the literary excellence of Rupi’s work, the fact is that excellence is expected from minorities when they receive any amount of acclaim for their work, as they need to give two or three times the amount a white person has to. There is no room for error or imperfection for people of color, particularly women, so to have these two white teenagers blatantly rip off the work of minorities shows how white mediocrity continues to thrive in our society.

But the insult of Milk and Vine goes further than its mimicry of Rupi’s work. The book also caught flak for stealing the Vine memes without crediting the content creators — further complicated by how black teens, Vine’s biggest creators, didn’t see any profit from their creations on Vine. Adam and Emily released a vague statement saying that they did not infringe on any copyright and claiming they did not anticipate how famous the book would become — they were “two teenagers just having fun.” While they have not released a follow-up statement on whether they will compensate the Viners in question, the two are onto the natural next step: converting viral content into clout. The success — and Internet approval — that this book has received is galling. Is this how we reward white people capitalizing off the work of people of color?

That said, Milk and Vine isn’t the first time the Internet has come for Rupi Kaur’s writing style. While simplicity, accessibility, and brevity are markers of Rupi’s Instagram-friendly poetry, Rupi herself is a complicated figure. A wildly popular poet with 1.8 million followers on Instagram, Rupi has also been accused of plagiarizing the writing of Nayyirah Waheed, whom Rupi has mentioned as an influence. Plagiarizing a black woman conflicts with her persona, which is often fashioned as intersectional feminist. Some have allowed Rupi leeway in these charges, acknowledging that this sub-genre of minimalist poetry “makes it impossible to tell where inspiration ends and plagiarism begins.” And while this alleged plagiarism of a black woman is extremely troubling, it’s not this allegation that Milk and Vine addresses.

Instead of more nuanced critique of Rupi’s work — like the writer Chiara Giovanni’s musings on whether the non-specificity of her poetry is a disingenuous marketing tool for white audiences and poet Kazim Ali’s analysis of the the surface-levelness of Rupi’s poems (“They identify; they do not interrogate.”) — this book is based off mocking her work. White mediocrity doesn’t allow space for minorities who do not make an undeniable bid for air to breathe.

Rupi Kaur’s success in publishing — in making poetry somehow a profitable profession — is unbelievable to those who mock her. There’s no literary consensus of Rupi’s excellence, and excellence is expected from all minorities, Milk and Vine is thus one tool used to undercut the success of women of color. Rupi had the gall to take up room in such a huge way that she cannot be dismissed as simply taking advantage of identity politics.

What’s most disturbing, though, is how quickly this young white couple’s mockery of a South Asian woman’s writing about violence, femininity, and trauma has gained an audience, and fans. Milk and Vine capitalizes on publicly acceptable literary shaming to further the creators’ own careers and wallets, a hustle not so far from how many thought Rupi “used” her viral period-stain photo fame to jumpstart her writing career. The key difference, however, is that these hustles ostensibly came from two different mothers: one from irony, the other from earnestness.

Representation — a seemingly infinite quantity in the age of the Internet and mass communications — somehow becomes finite when it’s representation of people of color. Rupi Kaur’s success itself would not rankle so much if it ended with her clout and those Instagram followers — she is written off, partly, because of her popularity, after all.

It’s the material success that matters: Milk and Honey has sold more than a million copies; Rupi released a new book this October. This is what truly arouses this ire: Rupi Kaur didn’t have to be the best poet in the world to be the best-selling. It doesn’t matter if she’s good — true equality is the space for all us to be mediocre, isn’t it?